by Jennie Marts
Table Of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Acknowledgments
Turkey Sliders with Mac and Cheese
About the Author
Rescuing Harmony Ranch
Copyright © Jennie Marts
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereinafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Print ISBN 978-1-952210-05-1
eBook ISBN 978-1-952210-06-8
www.hallmarkpublishing.com
This book is dedicated to Todd, my real-life Hallmark hero.
Thanks for always believing in me.
Chapter One
It seemed fitting that Jocelyn Stone’s cell phone died just as the driver pulled up in front of the gate leading into Harmony Ranch.
Perfect. I lose my connection to the present just as I step into the past.
“This is as close as I can get you,” the driver said, clicking the trunk open.
“This is fine.” Jocelyn stepped from the car, the fine brown dust of the dirt driveway settling on her black high-heeled boots. It had been years since she’d been back to Colorado, back to the small ranch where she’d spent so much time with her grandmother. She inhaled a deep breath. The spring mountain air was so full of memories, she had to grab hold of the door to keep from stumbling back.
The air felt different here, drier and cleaner, and steeped with the smell of pine trees and freshly mown grass. A slight breeze lifted her bangs, and Jocelyn caught the scent of lilacs from the long stand of trees lining the yard of Gram’s Victorian home.
The soft scent of the pond and the earthy smell of the horses in the corral spurred recollections of her childhood and all the time she’d spent here. She’d learned how to ride, how to make soap, and how to milk a cow.
And this is where she’d first fallen in love. She could almost feel the scratchy wool blanket covering the seat of the truck where Mack had taught her to drive…and the scent of hay in the barn where they’d shared their first kiss.
Stop. This trip was not about Mack Talbot and going down memory lane. This was about helping her grandmother. She took another deep breath and resolved to put the past behind her.
Yeah, right. The past was all around her, compressing in like the walls of a trash compactor. Which was exactly what she needed to do—compress those memories into a small little cube and tuck them away. She could think about them later. Or never. Yeah, never sounded good.
She grabbed her backpack and the designer purse she’d bought with the first paycheck she’d earned at her marketing firm in New York. She’d spent the last four months working her tail off trying to nab a new account and put herself in the running for a swanky promotion. A promotion that might now be in jeopardy.
This trip couldn’t have come at a worse time. Her company had been trying to win the account of Midtown Perk, an up-and-coming coffee house scheduled to open that fall. Jocelyn had already put in countless hours creating a marketing campaign that she hoped would blow away both the client and her boss, Andrea, and make her the clear front-runner for the Director of Creative Services position.
Fortunately, Andrea had agreed to give Jocelyn two weeks’ leave—provided that she’d continue to work on the client’s portfolio—when she’d called her that morning to say she had a family emergency and needed to fly out to Colorado that day.
She still couldn’t believe she’d secured that flight. It had maxed out her credit card, but there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her grandmother. Heaven knew Molly Stone had done enough for her growing up. It was too bad they couldn’t count on Mom for help—she’d been holding a silly grudge against Gram for years. Jocelyn didn’t know what the argument was about. She doubted her mom even remembered after all this time. It most likely had something to do with her deadbeat dad, who had walked out of her life when she was twelve years old. But as the only daughter of an only daughter, her mom and her grandmother were all the family she had. So when Gram had called to tell her she’d broken her leg in a car accident and needed help, Jocelyn had booked the flight without hesitation.
She’d hauled out her suitcase and had started throwing everything she could think of into it before they’d even hung up the phone. Which was evident by the way the driver was dragging the brute of a bag over the edge of the trunk.
It hit the ground with a thunk, one of the ends of the orange tape declaring the bag “Heavy” hanging limply from the side. She’d been thankful the gate attendant hadn’t charged her a fee for the bag; it had topped the scale at fifty-one point two pounds. But now, as she regarded the long walk up the dirt driveway, she wished she’d been more discerning in her packing choices. This wasn’t the city. Did she really think she’d need two pencil skirts and four silk blouses when most days on the ranch called for nothing fancier than jeans and a T-shirt?
“What is this place?” the driver asked, shielding her eyes from the sun as she peered down the driveway where two girls clad in prairie dresses and sunbonnets walked toward the large white barn.
“It’s a living history museum and ranch. It’s a real working farm with horses and cows, but it’s also a historic site that’s been preserved so visitors can see what it looked like in its original state in the early 1900s. The staff and volunteers wear period dress and do programs about what life was like during that time.”
“Oh, wow. That’s neat.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Every effort is made to keep everything really authentic to what the original homesteaders would have had. They do a lot of demonstrations and hands-on activities so visitors can experience what daily life was like for the people who once lived here. My grandmother owns it. She’s been running it since the Sixties.” She lifted her chin. Gram was an amazing woman, and Jocelyn couldn’t help bragging a little about all the things she’d accomplished and built here.
The driver nodded. “I live in Colorado Springs, but I’m gonna bring my kids to check it out this summer.”
“You should. And thanks again for bringing me all the way up here.” Jocelyn had flown into Colorado Springs, but the small town of Harmony Creek was close to thirty minutes into the mountains above the city. She’d been lucky to find someone willing to bring her all the way up.
The driver shrugged and passed Jocelyn her card. “I don’t mind. It was a gorgeous drive. Call me when you’re ready to go back to the airport, and I’ll bring you back d
own.” She waved before getting back into the car.
Jocelyn pushed through the gate, hauling the suitcase behind her. Her grandmother had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday, but it was still in great shape. Probably because she never went anywhere.
The bag lurched to a stop as the wheels caught on a row of rocks. Gah. She leaned back as she tried to yank it over. The bag tipped to the side as the handle broke loose in her hand.
She fell back, right into the hard body of a man. And quite a man, judging from the strong muscled arms that wrapped around her.
“Whoa. You okay, there?” he asked, his voice a deep-toned bass in her ear.
She pushed to her feet, holding his arm to steady herself. She turned as the scent of him swirled around her, a masculine blend of musky aftershave, earth, and wood smoke. And something else, something familiar.
She blinked as she took in the sight of the man who had caught her. He was tall, well over six feet, with shoulders that seemed almost as broad as the barn in the background behind him. Her gaze traveled up from his square-toed cowboy boots, over his jean-clad legs, and the burgundy thermal shirt that stretched over his chest to the trimmed black beard covering his chin. His hair was dark and thick, a lock of bangs hanging over amused blue eyes—eyes that she knew as well as her own.
Her breath caught in her throat, and all she could whisper was, “Mack?”
“Hey, Joss.”
“Is it really you?” She blinked again. What was he doing here? Her gaze raked back over his shoulders. “You’ve gotten so…big.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
Her face flushed with heat. “Okay, that sounded weird. But I just mean, I haven’t seen you in years. And the last time I did, you did not look like…this.” She pressed her hand to her leg to keep from reaching up again. What was wrong with her?
“You mean like a scrawny seventeen-year-old kid?”
“I wouldn’t say scrawny—more like lean and wiry.”
“Huh,” he grunted. “You mean scrawny.”
“Well, you’re not scrawny now.” The last time she’d seen him, he’d only had half an inch on her five-foot-eight frame. Now, even in her heeled boots, she had to peer up at him. “When did you get so tall?”
He pushed back his shoulders, making him seem even larger. “The year after you left, I had a growth spurt, grew another six inches by the time I hit eighteen. I marked it on the board in the barn so if you ever came back, you could see that I beat you.”
A pain twisted her heart at his words. That was the year her mom had gotten into the fight with Gram and had moved them to New York. Jocelyn had spent her senior year in the city, and hadn’t made it back to the ranch since.
She’d wanted to. She and Mack had been dating for years by then, and they’d devised a wildly romantic plan to keep in touch. Both of them had planned on her coming back to Harmony for good after they graduated. They’d talked of getting married and eventually taking over the ranch.
But Mack hadn’t followed through on his side of the deal. Instead, by the next spring, he’d taken up with Ashley Deeds, another girl from their school. And she was the one he’d married.
Once Jocelyn had heard about that, she hadn’t wanted to come back.
She tried to push away the memory with a forced laugh. “Oh gosh, I forgot about our competition to see who would get taller.”
“How could you forget? Seemed like we had a competition for everything—who could swim the farthest, who could milk a cow the fastest, who could find the most eggs from the chickens.”
“Don’t forget who could bake the best cookies. I definitely won that one.”
“That remains to be seen. My cooking skills have gotten better.”
She shook her head, surprised at how easily they fell back into their easy banter. “Why did we do that? What made us compete over every little thing?”
He shrugged. “I think it started that summer your parents got divorced. Maybe you felt like you had something to prove.”
It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. It was her parents’ divorce and the lack of financial stability it had caused that had finally forced her and her mom to move in with Gram the summer she’d turned fourteen. The same summer she started to notice new feelings for the cute boy she’d spent the last four summers with, catching crawdads and running around the ranch. “Wow,” she said. “That was deep. Especially since we haven’t seen each other in over a decade.”
She still held the suitcase handle in her hand, and she twisted the faux leather in her fingers, not sure what to say next. She hadn’t meant to bring up the fact that she hadn’t been home in so long. What if he asked her why she hadn’t come back? No way was she ready to go there.
For a minute though, it had felt like old times, teasing and joking around, and he seemed genuinely glad to see her. Now, she just felt self-conscious and uncomfortable, the memories of being ignored and forgotten swirling through her.
She forced her hands to still.
It was a long time ago. We were just kids, she reminded herself as she tried to steer their conversation away from their personal lives. “Let’s go back to talking about something less awkward—like your muscles.” Yeah, much less awkward to talk about those. She needed to just stop talking. “What kind of workout are you doing? Kickboxing? Free weights?”
He huffed again. “I don’t work out. I just work.” He nodded his head to the blacksmith shop, a smaller wooden barn set off to the side of the larger one.
“What? Here? You work here?” He’d gone on to work at Harmony Ranch without her?
She’d done her best to put him out of her mind, to not let herself imagine what might have been, but in the few weak moments she’d let herself think about him, she’d always assumed he’d left Harmony Creek to go off and live the perfect life with Ashley.
He stared at her as if she’d just sprouted horns. “Yeah. I apprenticed here after high school, then took over the shop from my grandfather. How do you not know this? Don’t you talk to your grandmother?”
Her back bristled. Not about you. Never about you. Not since her grandmother had told her he’d married Ashley, and Jocelyn had declared she didn’t want to hear another thing about Mack Talbot. Ever. “Of course I talk to her. I just talked to her this morning when she called to tell me she’d been in a car accident. Why do you think I’m here?”
He leveled her with a cool stare. “I would not presume to know why you do anything, Jocelyn.”
Ouch. His comment felt a little salty. What was that about? She lifted her chin. “Well, what does your wife think of being back on the ranch again?” Two could play at that game.
“What wife?” He laughed, an actual chuckle. “You mean Ashley? Dang, you are out of touch. We were married for less than a year.”
Less than a year? Jocelyn couldn’t believe it. She’d assumed they had a house, a dog, and several little Macks and Ashleys running around. Her gaze flicked to his empty ring finger, and she was a little embarrassed at the way her heart perked up at knowing he wasn’t married anymore.
“We lasted about nine months, right up until my grandfather got sick and left me the smithy shop, and I told her I was planning to stay in Harmony Creek. Then she hightailed it out of here faster than an ornery bronc at a rodeo, and I moved back into the caretaker’s cottage with my grandparents.”
Oh no. She lowered her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. We never should have gotten married in the first place. We were too young. And we got married for the wrong reasons.”
The wrong reasons? What did that mean? “I meant I’m sorry to hear about your grandfather. I didn’t know he was sick.”
“He’s not. Not anymore. He kicked the cancer, but decided to retire anyway. By that time, Ashley and I were already divorced.”
“That’s good. I mean about the c
ancer, not the divorce.” Her cheeks warmed again. Where had all their easy banter gone? Their conversation now felt as painful and prickly as a peeved porcupine.
A grin tugged at the corner of Mack’s lips. “Grandpa accredits his recovery to his steady diet of bacon and eggs, buttermilk, and the shot of pickle juice he takes every Sunday night. He claims it cleans his gut and his palate and sets him right with the Lord to take on a new week.”
Jocelyn wrinkled her nose as she laughed. “How does a shot of pickle juice set anything right?”
Mack laughed with her. “I don’t know. Personally, I’m going to give modern medicine the credit, but you know there’s no arguing with Hank Talbot. Which is why I still live in the caretaker’s cottage, and he and my grandma moved into a little apartment in town.”
“Oh. I guess I’d heard that they moved into town a few years ago, but I didn’t know you were still living at the ranch.” Which meant he’d be in the house directly behind the one she’d be staying in—almost close enough to touch.
No. No touching. No even thinking about touching Mack Talbot. She was here to help her grandmother, not rekindle an old flame that had been snuffed out years ago.
She lifted her chin, determined to appear nonchalant—like this easy chatting about their past wasn’t affecting her at all. If he was going to act like everything was fine between them, then so would she. Even though a million questions ran through her head. The biggest one was, Why?
But now wasn’t the time for questions, for digging up past hurts. Now was the time to focus on her grandmother. “Speaking of grandparents, I should probably head over to see Gram.”
“I’ve already been instructed to bring you to the hospital as soon as you arrived.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” His offer was kind, but spending more time with him felt like just extending the awkwardness.
“How do you plan to get there, then? Walk?” He glanced down at her boots. “Not in those heels.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve walked all over New York in these heels.” Although the boots were starting to get a little uncomfortable. And being back on the ranch had her wanting to slip on her sneakers and explore the sweet-smelling pastures beyond the fences and the cool shadows of the trails leading up the mountain behind the barn. “I figured I could use Gram’s car while I was here.”